LHGG FG621-EA poor performance on Vodafone 4G

RouterOS General
1

Installed the LHGG LTE6 with the FG621-EA modem module running RouterOS 7.16.1 and modem v16121.1034.00.01.01.04
Tested Vodafone reception before installation through Pixel 7 Pro and was getting 4-60Mbps download consistently at the chimney stack installation point.
Throughput to the router from the LHGG isn’t getting above 5Mbps and I’ve checked the direction and the dish is mounted using the LHG quick mount for flexibility.
There’s no line of sight to the mast with some douglas fir and scots poine in the way but its not dense commercial forest and testing at the mast gives 90Mbps+.
I suspect that the vodafone signal is not happy with Mikrotik and in the past I have improved the performance on the R11e-LTE by changing the IMEI to an apple iPhone generated one.
I cant find the terminal AT commands for the FG621 that allows you to change the IMEI though. R11e-LTE command is /interface lte at-chat lte input=“AT*MRD_IMEI=W,0101,11JAN1970,86560xxxxxxxxxx”. I have adjusted the MTU to 1492 and tried lower settings to no success also.

Anyone connected the FG621-EA through Vodafone with good bandwidth or know a config to allow for full CA throughput? Also looking for the IMEI change command.

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FG621-EA doesn’t support carrier aggregation in uplink (while most contemporary smart devices do) … and depending on MNO’s configuration it may be forced to use cell with low capacity as serving cell which then limits UL speeds (for DL, where CA does work, this is not as big problem because the CA member cell can provide high throughput even if serving cell doesn’t).

Another problem with LHGG: it’s antenna performs poorly for frequencies below 1.5GHz … if MNO uses low-frequency cell (B8, B20, B68) as serving cell, the poor-performing antenna degrades throughputs even further.

3

Thanks @mkx,
That’s what I had feared and cursing MT for updating the LHGG with a non-CA capable modem in the FG621-EA. I may be able to dig out a R11E-LTE6 card and swap them out. Otherwise im going to replace the MT with a Poynting XPOL-2-5G and have to change the router over too.
Thanks for the swift reply anyway.